(Social) Place and Space in Early Mycenaean Greece, pp. 571-594, 2021/05/26
International Discussions in Mycenaean Archaeology
October 5–8, 2016, Athens
From the beginning of the Shaft Grave period, leading people on the mainland were in the position to acquireforeign luxuries and valuable raw materials in growing quantities. Some of these prestige goods clearly served as cultequipment in Minoan Crete; others display a complex system of religious figurative scenes and motifs of undoubtedlyMinoan inspiration. Such scenes and motifs were virtually unknown in the preceding periods of MH Greece. Despitetheir foreign background, these objects had some impact on the formation of Mycenaean cult practices. It is arguedthat within this process of appropriation mainland inhabitants made a deliberate choice of the available ceremonialequipment and cult symbols. It seems that only those cult implements such as rhyta and tripod offering tables wereborrowed from Crete, which could be incorporated in indigenous MH religious traditions. Significantly, such objectswere produced until the end of the Palatial period. Correspondingly, Mycenaeans were interested in only those representationsof ritual actions and symbols which had a meaning in terms of their own religious conceptions. Along theselines, Minoan forms of artistic expression had a strong impact on the development of Mycenaean religious figurativeart and symbolism.
Keywords: rhyta, tripod offering tables, double axe, fenestrated axe, processions, crocus, lily
